David Mamet

Here's the thing, Stacy Schiff-- just a great historian-- she just wrote a book about the witches in Salem.
Marvelous book.
And if you look at it, Salem-- right over here-- was involved in a mass hysteria for about a year and a half.
And you could say, no I'm not a witch, but what you couldn't say-- and you might be able to get off.
You probably wouldn't.
But you might be able to get off.
By saying, I can prove to you that I'm not a witch.
I don't know how you prove a negative proposition-- you can't-- logically, but you might be able to get off.
The one thing that would get you killed is saying there are no witches.
Right?
So the one thing, the unpalatable truth, is there's no such thing as character.
Just doesn't exist.
Where is it?
Where is it?
Here, go through the thing-- I'm going to shake it out.
All there is, is the things that people say.
Why do they say them?
In order to get something from each other.
Guy A wants to get something from girl B. Girl B wants to get something from guy A. That's why they talk.
The rhythm of their speech is a certain kind of poetry, which is structured so that if each one of them is pursuing a specific goal you might even call it a play.
But there is no backstory because they don't-- We imagine them.
And here's a perfect example.
We listen to the radio.
And sometimes-- many of us had the experience of thinking, oh my gosh-- when we meet a radio personality-- I didn't think she looked like that.
That's not what I thought she looked like.
Because it's never what we thought she or he looked like, because we didn't think they looked like anything.
We thought they looked like something, but we never had a picture in our head.
And here's another example.
Anybody have voices inside their head?
I certainly do, and I won't shut up.
Most of us do.
We have this voice that's not quite our voice, but it's a voice.
What does that person look like?
It's not us.
It's something.
We think we almost know what they look like, but they don't have a physical being.
And if we saw the physical being we'd say, no no that's not him.
Similarly, these lines on the page create the illusion that there is something behind them.
And that we can grasp it.
We can write it.
We can understand it.
He's the kind of a guy who-- but doesn't exist.
What we're creating is an illusion.
And there's another way that we can understand, as Bruno Bettelheim wrote a wonderful book called The Uses of Enchantment about fairy tales.
And he said the fairy tales work because-- one of the reasons they work is because we don't characterize the hero or the heroine.
You say, a beautiful, young woman rode into town on a horse.
We don't say, a beautiful, young black woman, because if you're not black it ain't you.
We don't say, a beautiful, young white woman, because if you're not whi...

Write great drama

David Mamet sat in on a poker game full of thieves and left with the inspiration for American Buffalo. Now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Glengarry Glen Ross takes you through his process for turning life's strangest moments into dramatic art. He'll teach you the rules of drama, the nuances of dialogue, and the skills to develop your own voice and create your masterpiece.

Watch, listen, and learn as David teaches his first-ever online dramatic writing class.

A downloadable workbook accompanies the class with lesson recaps and supplemental materials.

Upload videos to get feedback from the class. David will also critique select student work.